Sol’s birthday gift ch.2: Dangers of the reef
 
The trio had resumed their long journey and Dos found out that the two orcas had not lied about their enormous food consumption. The bottlenose dolphin had thought they were bragging before, but as they travelled through the endless expanse of the dark blue open ocean, a few more pelagic sharks and some unlucky mobulas found their way down their hungry gullets. Dos was getting along just fine with his single blue shark, while Martin, the big bull leading the pack, was nearing the double digits since Dos joined them. But maybe that was only true because Dos was able to abuse the much larger orcas’ bow waves to move around. After all, to them it was just pushing along something a fraction of their weight, but for him it meant about a third less energy expended for travelling. Then again, he was a proper dolphin, so a lot of that saved energy was spent to jump over or dance around the orcas for everyone’s entertainment.
 
Days later, when Dos’s digestive tract was also empty front to back, they started to feel a change in the water. It became brighter, warmer and it tasted different as well.
“We are getting close.” Martin explained. “The algae changes and it will keep getting warmer. Soon we will get to really stuff our bellies.”
As predicted, they encountered more life soon. They got close enough to Cocos Island that they saw birds when holding their head above the water and at one point Sol tried to impress everyone by swallowing a green turtle. He did manage to consume the hapless creature but it seemed to be more obstacle than prey as his forestomach was up for a literal grind to break it down.
“Leave these to the tiger sharks, they have a stomach for them.” Martin said, trying really hard to sound concerned or stern while his inward grin was audible in his voice. Secretly he was proud that his son elected to follow through and eventually digest the turtle, shell and all, instead of regurgitating it.
“I would rather leave the tiger sharks to my stomach though.” Sol replied and they all snickered.
“Good luck with that. They are mean and some can swallow me whole.” Dos said, remembering all too well that they were probably the only species that sent him on more reluctant than willing trips through their guts.
“There will be some snack sized ones too, if we are lucky. But I may have taught them to stay clear of orcas in the last decade or two.” Martin chuckled, showing off his half open maw to Dos who nearly swooned at the view, imagining huge predatory sharks slipping helplessly over that broad orca tongue, vanishing down that wide, squishy throat, never to be seen again. It took some self control to not get aroused outright.
“Ohh that means we can catch our first whitetip reef sharks today!” Sol exclaimed as the ocean floor became visible again, for the first time in over a month. It was just a dark blur for now but the ascending ground meant they were now entering the densely inhabited zone of the ocean once more. Inhabited as in calorie dense, for this trio and their exceedingly high trophic levels.
“What do you want with those tiny things?” Martin asked, a little distracted with a pair of silky sharks which sharply changed course as soon as they saw him and accelerated to very unattractive speeds before Martin could decide if he wanted to hunt them.
“They are delicious, they are the best prey from my first hunt together with you, they squirm nicely, have no barbs or stingers, they are the first shape I managed to assimilate, their bodies are rich in fat aaaand don’t forget they are delicious.”
“Fine, I think I get it.” Sol’s father chuckled. “Just don’t come complaining when you got more coral stuck in your melon than meat in your belly. But I am sure Dos will find them neat.”
The bottlenose chuckled. “After that thing with the blue shark I think something easier but squirmy might be a nice change. But what are their jaws like? Asking for a friend.”
“Does that friend start with f and end with lipper?” Martin teased back and swam over to the dolphin, giving him a nudge along his side.
“Mayybe. But seriously, will I be my stomach content’s chewing toy?”
“Perhaps. They are very flexible.”
“But their teeth are just little needles. I doubt they can do much to you.” Sol added in. “I ate a few while they were hunting and they basically just hold and gulp little fish.”
“Or utterly shred one in their frenzied group feedings.” Martin continued. That was not too encouraging for Dos, but Sol soon clarified.
“So, you got bit by a blue shark and it was just inconvenient right?”
Dos nodded.
“These can slice fish in half that a white tip would not be able to tear apart on its own. I doubt I would feel much if one bit me.”
Martin was still peering into the blue, seemingly looking for something, but it appeared the local sharks were not going to welcome him with a free lunch.
“Alright, I think we are officially here.” he announced as the waters before them grew darker with the presence of steep rocks and gentle slopes reaching all the way to the surface with a lush green island towering above all of it. “You two can try and snack on the smallest sharks out there, I am going to see if I managed to find the spot where the sardines are hunted by the mackerels are hunted by the barracudas are hunted by me.”
“Was that even a sentence?” Dos asked.
“Old people humour, more like it. Come on, I'll show you where the whitetips are.”
 
Sol was happy to see Dos following him with visible excitement. The dolphin which had already consumed a blue shark alive on his way here was probably even more changed compared to last year than Sol was himself. Except the size of course, which had stayed the same for Dos and roughly quadrupled for Sol. Still, that first hunt together with his father had been burned into his mind as a warm core memory so firmly, he had no issues at all identifying the kind of landmarks he knew the white tip reef sharks would inhabit.
“It is daytime, so they are going to be in hiding a lot.” he explained to Dos, as the two hungry cetaceans glided through the crystal clear water, feeling the swell of the waves and currents push their massive bodies around.
“Did you not say they were over a meter long?” the dolphin wondered. He certainly had the appetite for something in the ten kilo range after days of fasting and when he pinged Sol’s belly he found his turtle had long since disintegrated into an impossible 3D puzzle as well, leaving only vacant stomach chambers in its wake.
“Yes, but some are smaller, some much bigger and all of them really crafty. Look where a turtle or a moray would hide. Spots like that. Holes in the reef, ledges, cracks. Close to the floor.”
“They don’t have to move?” wondered Dos who was used to only seeing sharks swimming at all times.
“They can just breathe.”
“That explains why we saw none.” The dolphin replied and swam closer to the bottom of the reef, where the chalky rock and colourful hard corals merged into fine sandy dunes. He peered around and sure enough saw some eels with his eyes and rays in the sand with his sonar but then after a minute some out of place snow white reflections caught his eye.
“Erm, do they tend to bunch up?” he asked as he looked under an overreaching rock overgrown with old coral. The shadowy area mostly protected by the rock was packed with slender grey shapes that were not too similar from slender shark types Dos knew in shape and -as of recently- taste. Just the snouts were downright boxy like a tiger shark’s.
“I am not su-Ohhhhh~ Hello lunch.” Sol cooed as he saw the sharks. “I guess they do bunch up. Two for you, five for me?” he chuckled after giving a quick count.
Dos Chuckled. “How are you going to get them out of there?” he asked, seeing the sharks were already looking at them wearily. Sadly for the six cetacean stomachs involved, the whitetips were trusting their hideout more than their ability to outswim cetaceans dozens to nearly a thousand times their weight. Instead they just stared up at the hovering menaces clearly plotting to consume them.
“You can fit down there, right?”
“So they can each have a go at biting me?”
“Don’t be silly, sharks don’t cooperate on anything. Also they would have to get close to your maw to do that and that is where they belong anyway.”
….
“If they actually injure you I’ll shift into my whitetip form so you can get a taste.”
“Deal” snickered at the dolphin, pleasantly surprised with his own greed and eagerness. Tasting a new species of shark either way and a chance to give Sol a tour of his stomachs for a change sounded like a good arrangement. Dos swam down to the ground, slowly drifting towards the weary sharks in their hidey hole. The ledge was pretty low but in the end he managed to cram his head inside a little by compressing his squishy melon against the jagged roof of the cave-like structure. This was going to leave a few temporary scrapes, which was infinitely easier to recover from compared to what he had in mind for whichever whitetip he ended up catching.
It turned out in this one instance, being the bigger fish was a bad thing. The smaller whitetips managed to cram themselves into the rearmost bits of the structure, whirling up sand as they scampered over the floor and each other to get as far away from the terrifying dolphin as possible. Meanwhile Dos clicked his sonar in order to get any idea where they were and how to grab one, but the whole scene was so chaotic he ended up just randomly snapping his jaws while treating Sol’s eager comments and the shark’s frightened hisses and calls as white noise. They were really unhappy about Dos being there and hunting them and he could not blame them for it. But the dolphin was focussed on ending a reef predator’s career and reassigning them to food and only that.
At one point he felt something rough but flexible getting caught between his teeth.
“I got one!” he cried out triumphantly, drowning out his catch’s shrieked complaints. The bottlenose wiggled around, ignoring the slightly painful scraping and grinding over his head as he dragged a slightly over a meter long female whitetip reef shark from underneath the reef ledge. With her soft caudal fin clamped between Dos’ conical teeth, the shark could not go anywhere. Had he been a hungry bull shark she could have just flicked her tail and gotten away with a slightly shortened fin, but with blunt dolphin teeth this was not working. As she thrashed and exerted herself, Dos’ head barely bobbed whenever she tried to squirm free.
“Drag her up a bit so she can’t hide immediately if you lose her.” was Sol’s first really useful tip. After months in open water Dos had to get used again to hideouts and obstacles being a thing. In the expanse of the ocean it had always been a matter of grabbing a prey and consuming it right away. Nothing to think or worry about. But the orca was right. His exceedingly squirmy prey might he hard to ingest and if she escaped, Dos wanted that to happen in a surrounding where he had every advantage. However the second he thoroughly dislodged the little shark from her refuge, she nearly bent in half and delivered a firm bite to his left flipper with a snarled “Let me go!”
“Now I am going to digest you even more.” Dos spat back, nodding to the left and snapping his own jaws, engulfing more of her flexible tail. He could not enjoy her yet, on account of the many little cuts she left in his sensitive fin, but even in the chaos of the hunt he could tell that Sol had oversold these sharks but not their bite.
“Do you need help?” Sol asked but Dos only groaned, determined to consume this shark and end his hunt on his own.
“Just let go and I will too.” the shark bargained, giving Dos an idea. He had surprised and ambushed sharks before to get them into his belly, now it was time for deception.
“Fine. You win.” he hissed and with a few kicks of his tail propelled himself nearly to the surface before letting go of his prey. With a small puff of blood coming off the mauled flipper the whitetip turned around, desperate to get away from the hungry dolphin. But That was exactly what Dos wanted. There was some twenty meters from his position to the cover of the reef. Just enough for him to catch up with her and the shark ‘kindly’ lined herself up straight. With fierce determination Dos undulated his tail fast and hard. His muscles heated up to a slight burn as he gained speed. In her panic the shark never realised he had simply deceived her and this time she had no time to react. Dos gaped his maw, pushing his beak like jaws over nearly half her body and letting inertia thrust her lower tail right into his throat before he turned sharply to the left to avoid crashing into rock whose jagged edges had already signed his melon before.
“No! Let go!” the shark gasped, this time without any fin to bite as a bargaining chip.
“I will. Once my body is done with yours.” the dolphin replied with glee. He used his remaining momentum to just glide towards Sol, coming to a gentle stop before the orca and showing off his catch.
“Nice work. And? They are delicious, aren’t they?”
“I am not sure.” Dos replied and he gave a few swallows, dragging the whitetip backwards into his throat.
“Her skin is even rougher than that of the blue shark’s and she was more dangerous to grab than the bull shark pups which were about the same weight.”
He could see something close to insult in Sol’s eyes and quickly followed up on his critique.
“But they really do taste nice. I just think it is not worth getting bitten over in a place this rich in prey.” he said, nodding his head towards the reef, already seeing some glistening jackfish passing by, two species of grouper and a meaty moray eel without even trying hard to find an alternative to the shark sliding into his throat. He wondered for a second, why the shark was not feeling insulted about the casual comment on her suitability as dolphin food, but then quickly realised she was rightfully too busy succumbing to the terror of being eaten alive.
A few more strained gulps saw the shark's dorsal and then her pectoral fins folded neatly down alongside her body. He commented on how much easier this was achieved here compared to other shark species he had eaten, getting an approving nod from Sol. With some final gulps, Dos managed to push his tongue upwards and seal the shark into his digestive tract. As with his previous ones, as soon as her electroreceptors along her snout were entirely engulfed in his convulsing esophagus, she went from savage thrashes to light squirms as if in trance. One more swallow and Dos pushed her body into his forestomach, feeling the rough walled gut expanding pleasantly as the slender shark was curled up in there.
 
Sol giggled as he saw the satisfied look on Dos’ face and pinged his belly with his sonar. “Did you feel how easily she curled up and conformed to your forestomach? That makes these super easy to digest as far as sharks go. Give it an hour and she will break right apart.”
“Yes, yes, they are good eating.” snickered Dos. “But you really oversold the taste while not kidding about the teeth. You were about my size when you went crazy for them right?”
“Yes. I mostly went after them when the sun just went down. Then they come out to hunt and are easier to grab.”
“If you don’t slam into a rock.”
“That happened a few times.” conceded Sol. “But the bellies full of lightly squirming, oily sharks I got were worth it.”
“And the silly pleas.”
“Yes! Fish don’t do that. They just wiggle a bit or die on the first bite.”
“I used to not like the idea of, you know, more sentient prey. Having something experience fear for a longer time just to feed myself sounded cruel. But it feels oddly accomplishing to outrun or outsmart something clever and win their whole being as the prize.” Dos narrated while Sol looked at the squirms in his foregut slowly subsiding under the constant assault of the firmly kneading organ.
“Yes, that is another good part. Oh gosh all the blue sharks dad and I ate on the way here… Don’t tell my mom. Ever. She really does not like it when I eat smart-ish prey and if she hears I am targeting reef sharks on purpose and take you along she might get very upset.
“Or disappointed.”
“That is even worse! Anyway, I would like to get the next one. Care to help me? My head does not really fit under there. Just scare them enough to flee that spot?”
“Fine, but if I get bitten again, you are going to be my snack once we leave the island.” Dos replied. He was curious to see if Sol was still liking these reef sharks as much or if his fond memories just exaggerated what was objectively a B-tier prey item.
Dos and Sol coordinated their next assault on the hunkered down whitetip reef sharks in high pitched chirps their prey would barely understand if at all. Not that it made much of a difference to the little sharks. They knew that as soon as they left the crevice they were huddled up in, they would be run down and swallowed whole, just like the one they had all seen consumed by Dos a moment before. All the same, there were plenty of flight instincts being triggered when the dolphin’s beak pushed slowly under the rocky ledge once more while the orca was nowhere to be seen.
 
Sol saw how Dos’ head pushed into the gap between sand and rock. His three empty stomachs were violently urging him to fill them. He had passed up a few opportunities to feed just to make absolutely sure his first snack after returning here was one of his favourites. His father was probably working on his second quarter ton of assorted coastal fish by now and the thought gave Sol and especially his digestive tract a jealous pinch.
“I am not full yet.” he heard Dos chime. “One more of you, or maybe two of the smaller ones. The longer you wait to feed me the more room my belly will make.” he teased. Sol did not see it but when the muffled cries of the dolphin’s first prey became a bit more audible he knew Dos was showing off his maw and giving the whitetips a terrifying look. The reforming dolphin’s many years of being on the receiving end of such views was paying off now and as the cacophony of unhappy shark complaints peaked, one of them broke and tried to dar away from the deadly cetacean, only to put itself on the menu of a far larger one.
All it took Sol was a casual push of his fluke to propel himself a few meters forwards. Coming in from behind and above the shark which was entirely focussed on leaving Dos behind, his prey never noticed the approaching orca until his tongue scooped it up and his jaws closed gently around it. Sol was happy and proud of his catch but the first of his expectations was shattered. He recalled thrilling hunts and exhausting chases which culminated in filling meals when he had last hunted this species. Now that he was used to feeding on the bigger, stronger and vastly more capable blue and oceanic whitetip sharks, this tiny reef shark was almost boring to catch. He felt the little body, probably only seven kilos in weight, squirm on his tongue. The taste was still there but the fireworks of “my first life shark” emotions were gone, seeing that this was his 116th.
“And? Still good?” asked Dos, who reappeared from the rock with a few more scrape marks on his melon.
“Mhm.” replied Sol a bit unconvincingly and kept his maw open for Dos to see. The shark was sideways in his maw, bent into a U-shape. The orca’s tongue looked oversized for this prey and when it pushed up with visible finality, Sol felt his spirits dampened further as he barely felt his prey slip into his gullet and the sensation completely vanished in his forestomach. His entire digestive tract had adapted to bigger and exceedingly violent prey and just like that a prey, even one of great emotional value to him, had little impact on his hunt or his appetite when it weighed only a small fraction of his own tongue.
“I think I have outgrown my favourite food.” the orca sighed and looked at the small rock his snack had came from. Taking this shark’s life felt almost like a waste now, given the many groupers and eels he had let live to get to it. But the melancholy vanished quickly and he turned back to Dos.
“Let’s see what dad has been up to and focus on getting fat instead.”
So the two were turning back to where they had left the massive bull. Both had a whitetip reef shark in their forestomach. One was having to work over a sizeable prey, the other was casually folding a tiny creature in ways nature did not intend it to bend.
 
Martin chuckled as he felt the sonar pings on his body. He proudly presented his swollen flanks to his son and their friend and let them watch in jealous admiration as he pumped life and obliterated fish alike from his overstuffed forestomach into his already busy main stomach. A few too slow groupers, a dozen mid-sized barracudas and an absurd number of jack fish were all crammed within the previously hungry orca’s enormous gut.
“Looks good doesn’t it? And believe me, it feels even better. Once the valve to my main gut is lubricated with a layer of fish slime they just slide in almost on their own. And it tickles really nicely if they land in the acids still alive.” Martin narrated, preferring this smug tease over a parental ‘I told you so’. He did not need to ping their bellies to know they were not satiated yet but he asked anyway.
“How was it? I see Dos did some poking around.”
 
“We each got one and I learned they are not even my favourite shark anymore. Though the taste was still very nice.” his son replied.
“I suppose now that you are 500 instead of 20 times their weight, they don’t really do much for you, right? Harder to find, harder to get and still not filling?”
Sol nodded.
“And very toothy!” Dos added, nodding at the small puncture marks on his flipper.
“So, do you want something bigger, or finish off the school of jacks I mostly relocated?” Martin asked nodding over to the tall volcanic spire where the semi dispersed survivors of Martin’s lunch were in the process of being singled out and devoured by pretty beefy looking grey reef sharks.
 
The three cetaceans were all observing the hunting reef sharks. Martin, more out of curiosity, Dos to not get in the way of their jaws while he went after his share of large fish and Sol was trying to pick one for second breakfast. Sol had just chosen a two meter long female who was either pregnant or very well fed to become part of his depleted blubber when he heard an eerie noise. It sounded like a mix of flesh sandpaper on steel and something organic being torn apart. Turning to the right, Sol got a look at an impressive display. A tiger shark roughly the size of Dos was gliding through the dusk of the deeper water near the bottom of the reef, carried by the remaining momentum of what must have been a sudden strike. From its maw dangled the front half of a reef shark roughly half the tiger’s length. A few violent thrashes repeated the noise as the tiger’s head and tail whipped in the same direction, throwing its prey around. During that violent undulation a pair of impressive claspers swayed out from under the shark’s tail, classifying him as male. After just three shakes the frontal half of the reef shark dangled from his jaws at an angle only possible with a severed spine. Gusts of blood flushed from his flaring gills as he consumed his dying prey with a few easy gulps. Sol was mesmerised by the view. Not so much by the casual consumption of the surprised reef shark, he would have done the same. Rather it was the beauty of the adult tiger shark. As he watched his belly with the barely visible grey stripes expand from that large meal, Sol had just one feeling for him: Voracious greed.
 
“Come over here! I found a tiger shark! I always wanted to eat one of those.” Sol called out to his companions who were just now turning to the scene. After all, Dos had been busy feeding and Martin was too full to care for the telltale noise of a shark eating another one. But his son calling for assistance was something else. He turned his body around, feeling dozens if not hundreds of fish in his various stomachs pressing back against his muscles and refusing to let him move as intended. Sluggishly he swam towards Sol’s voice and soon got a look at the shadowy tiger shark below. Sol’s call had clearly alerted the shark as well and oddly enough he did not turn tail and flee. This one knew that he could not outrun a hungry orca. Though with how much of his strength was wasted on churning fish stuffed guts on each undulation of his tail, Martin was certain he could outswim an overstuffed one.
“Sol, be careful those are dangerous.” he called, mostly meaning the size of that predator his son clearly wanted to hunt. It had been his and Dos’ plan all along to help Sol feed on a tiger shark while they were at Cocos island, but this one was a bit large and some of the notches in the fins and tooth marks on his flanks reminded Martin of something, a few unsuccessful hunts of his own, more precisely. Recognition flashed over his mind and Martin could almost feel a variety of old scars pinching him all over his flippers and head.
“Sol, stay away from this one! It’s not safe!” he called after his charging offspring in vain, before nodding at the fast approaching bottlenose to go help him.
 
Not safe was probably a fitting if slightly tame description of something which had sawed through a reef shark’s spine in a blink and consumed the whole creature in thrice that time. But Sol did not care. The more impressive the prey, the greater the reward. He was yearning for that feeling of fullness. For what Dos had experienced with his first blue shark some days ago, of what he had experienced last year when he had been the scourge of the whitetip reef sharks. He wanted that feeling back and this old grizzly looking tiger shark was his ticket to a satisfying belly bulge. Also he was being watched, causing Sol to experience an insurmountable adolescent urge to impress the others. He needed this, so that shark needed to die in his belly.
While he was in an emotional frenzy, Sol did not care for the dark, calculating eye tracking his approach from his prey’s head. He had eaten dozens of sharks which had seen him coming in recent months. All of them had to restart as plankton fodder after a trip through his digestive tract. He saw no difference except the shape and size this meal was packaged in. He wondered, what did tiger shark even taste like?
“Come here sharky. Get in my belly!” he called, approaching at full speed, aiming to close the gap and make his maw the only way for the shark to go that was not solid rock. However the tiger shark was not stunned in fear like some of those Sol had consumed previously and in spite of his bloated belly he was not sluggish like his father either. Instead, Sol suddenly found out he had been anticipating his blunt charge. With the impressive dexterity reserved to sharks, the tiger snapped his body around and shot upwards, leaving Sol to rush further onwards, towards some jagged rocks he had entirely ignored before, expecting to have his rush slowed down by impacting with nearly four hundred kilos of food.
“Try me.” chuckled the shark drily as he darted off towards a formation of tall, slender volcanic rock formations. Sol saw his full gut and swaying claspers for a split second but had no time to appreciate the view. His sonar confirmed what his eyes had told him a heartbeat ago: he was headed towards jagged rocks. With some effort Sol angled his flippers upwards and matched that with his fluke, turning into a kind of half looping, getting out of the situation with just some scrape marks on his belly. Had he focussed on the shark rather than his own trajectory, some of those rocks might have slashed his underside or seriously injured his head.
He was far behind the shark now but Sol was determined to fill his forestomach with his striped and spotted body today. Luckily his own metabolism availed him of some hidden energy reserves, since it knew it would get the expended energy back from the little whitetip currently falling apart in the orca’s belly. With a determined scowl, Sol rushed off again, giving chase. He did see Dos coming in from the side now and the shadow of his father hovering somewhere above but he ignored them both. Instead he welcomed the slight burn in his tail muscles and the pressure of the water he was ploughing through. Bit by bit the shark’s silhouette grew in size.
 
Dos was fast but he could not keep up with an orca in a full sprint and especially not with how little air he had left. The call to action had caught him off guard, mid hunt. He would be able to get back at the fish he had to let go, or some suitable replacement for it, but the soreness building in his lungs prevented him from going at full speed.
“Sol, wait! This one is too dangerous.” he called. He was not sure why, but if Martin called out a specific shark as an issue there was certainly something to it. As he watched Sol hunt the tiger, he started to realise what. The shark seemed experienced. Not in the typical way of sharks being good at finding easy prey and dispatching it in seconds before vanishing out of sight again. This one seemed experienced in dealing with orca attacks. The dolphin had watched Sol and his father hunt pelagic sharks close to this iger’s length before. It has usually looked easy as the orcas had taken turns to tire out and eventually gobbling up a shark or two each. This one in contrary was using his native terrain to force Sol to evade in sharp turns, depleting the orca's air and stamina. On more than one occasion the shark remained almost still, merely gliding through the water, only to suddenly dart in an unexpected direction. Dos gasped in shock as he drew nearer and saw one of those evasions yield more than an infuriated, slightly more tired orca. This time the shark had darted upwards and on his way there delivered a short bite to Sol’s tall dorsal fin. It was not the same devastating force as he had used on his reef shark prey, but Dos still heard that squeaky noise of sharp teeth cutting into cetacean skin and Sol’s pained cry.
 
“Now I am really going to digest you!” gasped Sol, turning around furiously.
“Worry about drowning first.” quipped the shark. “Or don’t. You taste delicious.”
Sadly Dos had to agree with the shark, even though he despised him more with every second. As much as he would love to watch his smart maw vanish behind any orca’s gullet, it was his priority to keep Sol safe. But the shark was already setting up his next bite as he stayed near Sol’s tail, as far away from his hungry jaws as possible and above him. With a shudder Dos realised what the shark was doing. He had been on the receiving end of this so many times. He was placing himself between Sol and his air supply. If the orca wanted to breathe he had to run the gauntlet of those jaws. As absurd as the idea of a tiger shark hunting an orca over ten times his weight sounded, this was what the shark’s positioning looked like. He needed to act. And as he had realised, one way towards air was through that shark.
“Get away from him!” cried Dos and used his last energy to charge at the tiger, aiming for his gills. If he managed to cripple him, he and Sol could take a well needed breather before coming back down to finish off that mouthy shark. But his call had betrayed his presence. A nearly all black eye locked on him and Dos felt the cold calculating intelligence aimed at him. But his trajectory remained true. He shot towards the shark, the tips of his flippers hurting from the turbulence of the rushing water. He was so near he closed his eyes to avoid injury. He expected a sudden impact on his rostrum, that familiar sensation of gill bows and filaments breaking around it but instead there was nothing. He had just enough time to notice something was wrong when tough, abrasive skin scraped along his melon. The shark had arched his back and moved above him. He tried to turn his eyes to see, but suddenly there was just a blinding pain on his dorsal fin and a sharp slap from a tail as she shark took off.
“There, have fun with that dolphin.” The now fleeing shark hissed as Dos looked towards Sol and Sol stared right back. The young orca was seemingly shocked to see his friend injured or simply dismayed that his hunt had gone so wrong.
“Air, now!” barked Dos, less polite than he had liked. Pain, approaching asphyxiation and the unhealthy look of the similarly afflicted orca had eradicated his patience. He swam towards the bright warm surface and breached through it, shooting spray from his blowhole and inhaling deeply, mid air. He had needed this badly. But he could have done without the sudden pain he felt when the water closed back around him and seemingly took joy in creating turbulence around his wound. Sol took a bit longer to refill his lungs and then approached Dos, looking quite beaten down.
“You… your fin.” he said. “I am sorry. I did not think I was getting you in trouble.”
“Oh, I have been shredded by sharks like that before. It is not that painful to me. Not anymore. But what about your bite?”
“Nothing. But your dorsal is half gone.”
“It what? How? It did not feel that bad. How did he even get a bite on me?”
“The rear half looks like a crescent moon now. With some clear tooth marks.” Sol replied solemnly.
“Oh great, I have been Devied And here comes your father.”
 
Martin was out of breath when he arrived and he could taste blood in the water when he did. He was glad not much of it was his son’s. He knew they both reformed more or less regularly. He had eaten Sol himself at some occasions, seeing his son actually liked being consumed at irregular intervals, similar to Dos. But when he had seen that old elusive shark and his naive son rushing after him all he had felt was that impending dread of a parent about to lose a child and unable to help.
“Thank you Dos. That bite looks nasty. Sol have you…”
“Yes I thanked him already, dad.”
“I wanted to ask if you lost your mind. I told you to stay back. Now look at you getting all gnawed up for not listening. What would your mother say?”
Martin rarely invoked Eliana when raising Sol, mainly because he was putting him in his keel water, on a course to become a transient predator who takes joy in consuming large prey items no matter how much they squirm and complain. His mother would probably smack him too just for bringing Sol into hot and unfamiliar waters to snack on sharks. Still, it seemed to work.
 
“I’m sorry, dad. I did not expect the shark to be so strong. I ate dozens of the blues no problem, I thought I could take this one on my own. Make him mine, maybe even assume his form after digesting him.” Sol chirped apologetically.
Martin swam closer to press his Melon up under his son’s chin and lifted him up, literally and figuratively.
“I know, Sol. And with a different one you would have succeeded. You are a fierce predator. But this shark has a history of evading orcas. Namely me. His jaws have signed all over my body. I tried to eat him a few times myself and after pursuing him out of revenge, all I got was more scars. And back then I had more experience hunting sharks than you do now. Decades more. I thought he might even kill you.”
“That is not very easy, dad.” Sol said, cheering up once more and leaning into the gentle touch of his father.
“But, now that we are two and a half orcas” Sol said, glancing over at Dos who was circling around them uneasily. “Could we try to finally take him down.”
 
Martin took too long to formulate an answer and Dos took over. “I think we should. He bit every one of us now and I would not feel right leaving that island without taunting that guy through one of your bellies.” That made Sol chuckle and Martin sigh.
“Fine. The dolphin and I already planned to get you a tiger shark anyway. Might as well make it extra special.” he said with the kind yet defeated voice of a parent submitting to their kid’s demand for a new toy.
“By the way.” mentioned Dos. “If Sol needs a warm up on some smaller sharks, there are a few bulls down there who seem eerily interested in all the blood I am trailing. I think they are just waiting for you to leave me behind.”
“I really need a proper meal now.” sighed Sol, took another breath and moved below to hopefully surprise one of the assembled sharks, or run one down if he failed at that.
“I will help this time.” added Martin. He was too full to eat another herring, but the sharks did not know that and avoiding his full stomach would indeed lead to one ending up in his son’s empty one. But more importantly, it gave him and Dos the same idea. A chewed up fish was an old orca trick to lure in sea birds for a bigger snack. Now, what would a gnawed bottlenose dolphin put out as bait put on their platter?